Benjamin Franklin Whittemore record book and photographs

Collection

Identifier: W-0077

Scope and Contents

This collection contains a 165-page record book documenting the history of the Fifty-third Massachusetts Volunteer Militia and the post-war lives of militia members compiled by Benjamin Franklin Whittemore. A regimental roster lists the names, age at enlistment, and post-war occupations of members of the Fifty-third Massachusetts Companies A through K. The book also includes lists of officers, desertions, and deaths. Newspaper clippings describing regiment reunions. The collection includes Civil War cartes-de-visite of Whittemore and Henry A. Willis.

Dates

1863 - 1887

Creator

Williams, A. S., III (Collector, Person)

Conditions Governing Access

None

Biographical / Historical

A Union chaplain and congressman, Benjamin Franklin Whittemore was born in Malden, Massachusetts, on May 18, 1824. Whittemore attended Amherst College and became a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1859. During the Civil War, Whittemore served as a chaplain in the Fifty-Third Massachusetts Volunteer Militia. After the war, Whittemore moved to Darlington, South Carolina, and was elected to Congress, where he served from July 1868 to February 1870, when he resigned the seat. After several unsuccessful attempts to regain his congressional seat in South Carolina, Whittemore returned to Massachusetts and became a publisher. He died in Montvale, Massachusetts, on January 25, 1894.

Source: Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress